The 37-year-old actress has learned the hard way: When it comes to life and love, the most important thing is to keep trying. Because every so often, something wonderful happens.

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Uma Thurman is having a very good year. The 37-year-old actress is decorating her new home in New York City, "trying to make it homey and nice," she says, blushing slightly as she welcomes me inside. She has two spring films: The Accidental Husband, a comedy about being hooked up with the wrong man who just may be right, and The Life Before Her Eyes, a drama about the dreamlike and often tragic quality of life. And most significantly, she is in love — with Swiss-French businessman Arpad Busson, the very thought of whom makes her glow.

The morning we meet, Uma is fresh off a flight back from London, where Arpad lives and where the couple and her two children (with ex-husband Ethan Hawke), Maya, 9, and Levon, 5, spent "one of the best Thanksgivings I've ever had," she says. She cooked — "I make a mean stuffing" — and spent hours outdoors, a simple pleasure Uma believes rivals few others. As she boils a pot of tea, she pushes her hair from her face. It's a bit of a bird's nest, but Uma is refreshingly indifferent to her public image, as evidenced by her ensemble — sweatpants! — and her eclectic film career: Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, Gattaca. Her energy is both warm and fulsome, and her big, deep laugh is always at the ready, especially when she is goofing on herself. This single mom is also innately nurturing, offering cookies and sandwiches to guests — even annoying guests who turn up the morning after she's weathered a transoceanic flight with children.

You seem unbelievably chipper given that you got back to the States less than 24 hours ago.

I'm trying. I actually did yoga earlier this morning.

That's ambitious.

And so not typical. I am trying to start exercising again. I broke my wrist, pathetically, 11 months ago [while filming The Accidental Husband], and I took that as a six-month excuse not to do anything.

Are you big into yoga?

It took me years to like it. The chanting used to drive me crazy. Now I love the chanting. I find it a wonderful way to connect with other people. But I've never been a big workout person. I'm just about maintaining.

How else do you get rid of stress?

I've had trouble with that. My job is one good way. Sometimes I don't even know how much of my choosing a part is conscious. Like maybe I'm attracted to certain roles so I can explore something or unload. The last year I've focused on comedy. For good reason. I did not want to go to work and cry. I wanted to go to work and laugh.

How do you find being a single working mom?

Deeply challenging. And quite lonely. I just don't feel like the ins and the outs of it are acknowledged or shared very much. But parenting itself is a wonderful thing. The beauty outweighs the difficulty. It's interesting — my parents, for better or worse, stayed together. So I entered single parenthood without a lot of references as to what it might be like. Everything took me by such super surprise. It still does. Before, I felt I was a single parent, because I was on my own a lot, but I was really wrong. There is a world of difference between parenting alone, but with a person who cares about you and your children, and never having anyone around to turn to and say, "Oh, look what he did!" So that was interesting to learn about. [Laughs]

What else has surprised you about divorce?

When I was first going through my separation, someone said to me, "It will take you half as long as you were in the relationship before you'll feel better." And I wanted to knock them out cold across the table. Because, of course, I was in agony. And the last thing I wanted to think was that I was going to stay that way for a long time. But interestingly enough, it is over four years later — we were together eight years — and I finally feel like, cool. I feel better.

It's shocking how long the pain of a separation lingers.

I don't want to make this all about divorce, because I'm finally getting away from it, but truly, with divorce, you are one person before, and you have to figure out how to be another person after. Forget about whether your marriage works. You're losing your family. And women often blame themselves.

Only for everything.

You know why? Because at least that you have control over. People who blame everybody else, they don't realize doing that is like writing a blank check for all the control in their lives. But if you take responsibility, you can effect change. If you don't, you're a helpless victim. You choose! [Laughs]

Was it hard for you to move on?

Yes. Very. I've had only a few big relationships. And I always went back. I never left anybody and stayed away after one time. With my divorce, I felt like a refugee from my own life. As much as it wasn't satisfying, or people were complaining, we still made a life together. And then, I was outside of it.

Does being able to work help with that?

Getting to work feels like real me-time. Whereas before, I didn't appreciate the work as being a gift to myself.

When you choose movie projects now, do you weigh the part against the time you'll be away?

It's such a common dilemma for mothers: work or stay home? Which is more important?

Chances are whatever one you didn't do on whatever day is the one they'll say you should have done. [Laughs] But I hope as a woman in this day and age that it's possible to support your family, emotionally and otherwise, and still have the opportunity to express yourself and have a career. And that the kids benefit from that kind of upbringing. And they won't be hindered by what we might miss.

Tell me about your film The Accidental Husband.

I play a love expert. She is trying to get married to Mr. Right and she finds out she is accidentally married to Mr. Wrong.

All kinds of irony there.

[Uma smiles.]

You seem very happy with Arpad. Do you look for specific things in a guy or are you open to anything?

Quite the opposite. As a single parent, I have to be very, very careful. And it is so hard, because I'm not a fortune- teller. You don't know what's inside every guy. Sometimes it all adds up and other times it doesn't. Look, I wish I were a psychic. I'd love to know what's coming.

What about the philosophy that the journey makes you who you are?

I guess so. But I could have gotten along just fine without a few parts of my journey.

Maybe at 55 it will all click and make sense.

I'm 37 and I'm sure I could find the grace within myself to say that now. But I'm choosing not to. [Laughs]

Do you want more kids?

I'd love more. I come from a large family: three brothers and a half sister. It's a good basis for community — multiple sets of needs, of desires, of egos. When I had my second child, my anxiety as a parent dropped significantly. Worrying about one little voiceless baby was so stressful. Once there was another one, I was happy there was a witness. That's another great thing about siblings. Even though your impressions of your childhood are so different, you have a witness, or three. So yes, I'd like more children. I asked the doctor; she said there's still time. I still have the sippy cups.

Breathtakingly easy — until recently. I think the complexity of tween age is painful to watch. One minute she is totally happy, then she's not. And all the social complexity — it's excruciating. You don't want them to lose their confidence or suffer. Braces are coming. It's so much to worry about.

All mothers have that cringe reflex. You don't even want your kids to have their feelings hurt.

At all! I'd rather have a fingernail pulled out. It's tough. With boys and girls. Boys can be very sensitive, but they are impossible to dig feelings out of. Just like men! [Laughs] Let's learn the basic vernacular, boys! I feel, I want, I wish.

Did you like being pregnant?

I was a great pregnant person! I gained a huge amount of weight: 65 pounds. The first child — I was 27, I ate everything under the sun. I had a ball. I was 191 pounds when I gave birth. And the doctor was tsk-tsking me. Someone told me I was fat when I was eight months pregnant — you don't want to know who — and I began to weep. The second time, I really tried to watch my weight, and I gave birth weighing 192! It's like I would look at food and it would come onto me. These days, if you gain more than 35 pounds, you're a criminal. Enjoy trying to take it off, phooey on you.

You seem like you did fine.

[Laughs] I was lucky with Kill Bill in that I had to exercise. And like I said, I'm not the greatest athlete, but it forced me, virtually at swordpoint, to get back in shape.

Not yet. I've always wanted to have the initials of my children. I have a real passion for the Irish friendship ring, and I'd want to do that image with a little M and L on my forearm. I also thought I'd like to put something here. [She points to her previously broken wrist.] I hate that scar. It's from my surgery. And I thought about how nice it would be to turn something ugly into something positive.

Do you have friends who you turn to for support during tougher times?

Most of my friends are people I've known for a long time. And there aren't very many. I've always felt that life goes through mysterious chapters: There are periods where your life opens up, like doors, and you meet a bunch of people. And then there are periods when you are seemingly on your own. I went through a time when I was young where I really shut down. I didn't trust people. At one point, I thought, This is crazy. I can't live my life trying to protect myself all the time. I'll never make friends. I kind of decided to just live.

Making friends as a grown woman is tough. I've never had that Sex and the City fantasy happen.

Neither have I! I always wanted that. I think that is why that show is so popular, because no woman really has that but we always think every other girl does, and we really want it.

What was the last really lovely day you had?

Just last weekend in England. Sunday. We spent the entire day in the countryside. I feel truly myself when I am in nature, by the sea or in the mountains. I remember I had been living in the city for a long time before I had my daughter. And then when she was born, I got a place in the country. The first night I slept alone, I woke up in absolute terror six times. I ran around the house re-bolting the doors. It really took time to learn how to be alone again. I'm not good at just sitting with myself. I like being with people.

You don't find people chronically disappointing?

[Laughs] Of course I do! But I keep coming back for more! I'm that tragic type of personality. I think, Maybe this time will be different. Hope springs eternal. Ha! Actually, of any quality, that's the one I'm most grateful for: the willingness to reinjure myself. [She lets out a huge, loud, intoxicating laugh.] Hope trumps experience. So I keep trying. Absolutely.

Uma Thurman kept things casual during our March cover shoot, gravitating toward a hoodie sweater and jeans. She scribbled the word "home" on her REDBOOK T-shirt without hesitation. "There are no words to describe my home. It's simple. Everything I love is there," she said. "There's no place I'd rather be."

Fast Uma Facts:

Uma's father, Robert Thurman, is a professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University. Her mother, Nena, is a Swedish model-turned-psychotherapist. Uma was born in Boston and raised with her three brothers and a half sister in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her family relocated to New York City when she was 15.

Uma is on the board of directors for Room to Grow, a Boston-and New York-based nonprofit organization that supports low-income families through their children's first three years of life.

Her father was the first Westerner to become a Tibetan Buddhist monk, ordained by the Dalai Lama personally in 1965.

A then-18-year-old Uma had her breakout film moment as an 18th-century girl, Cecile de Volanges, opposite John Malkovich and Glenn Close in Dangerous Liaisons (1988).

Uma tested for the role of Tom Hanks's sultry mistress, Maria Ruskin, in Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), but lost the part to Melanie Griffith.